Arthur of Britain System
by Toner Martini
Summary: The story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (faithful to the story of Le Morte d'Arthur) but now a Sci-Fi Mecha story.


"Atmospheric entry in 30 seconds, raising heat shielding." The cockpit grew darker as thick panels of heat resistant alloy enveloped the canopy. The once clear image of the moon's dry surface was replaced by infrared outlines of his surroundings and a growing bright red hue was all that illuminated his cockpit now. Though the on-board computer was now in control of his craft, the fuselage began to rattle. As if he wasn't already sweaty enough in the stuffy G-suit, it was beginning to quickly warm up as well. Temperature control was a luxury that a grunt fighter pilot like him wasn't given.

"Hey rookie! Switch your comms off during reentry, would ya? The whole squad can hear your panting." His commander's annoyed voice was crackling through the interference.

"My apologies, right away Captain." he nervously replied.

"You can drop the formality now, kid. Fighters like us can't afford all that chivalric nonsense." The rookie stopped himself before instinctively replying with a 'Yes sir' and muted the antiquated radio headset in his helmet.

"Atmospheric entry in 10 seconds, prepare to deploy ballute." His fighter's computer blared into his ear and began the countdown. As he reached for the lever past the throttle he noticed a violent shaking in his hand. As much as he would have hoped it was just from the jostling of the plane as it fell through the thermosphere, he was painfully aware of how terrified he was.

"Deploy ballute, deploy ballute, deploy-" It took a considerable effort to make the lever budge, he was flying a veritable antique after all, but as soon as it gave way the ballute inflated around the fighter and the plane's descent slowed in an instant. His organs jumped into his throat with what felt more like an impact than deceleration. His G-suit was slow to react and inflated well after the shock.

Regaining his composure, the rookie began to flip several switches on the control panels in order to revert the plane back to its atmospheric settings. Despite the shielding of the ballute, the cockpit's temperature remained uncomfortably high. Now at the mercy of his aircraft, he sat still and gripped the controls while the hull jostled and creaked around him.

"Ballute dispersion in 10 seconds."

_Why did my first sortie have to be an invasion?, _he thought to himself. It wasn't as if he didn't expect to see action as a fighter pilot, he knew what he had signed up for. He just wasn't enough of a fool to believe in their reasons for fighting this stalemate of a war and he certainly wasn't patriotic enough to wish to lay down his life for his king without question either. He was uneducated and unskilled peasant through and through, but above all else he had a family to provide for. So it went without saying that joining the English military was the best, if not only option he had, regardless of how he felt about it.

"Ballute dispersing, switching control back to pilot." Immediately the inflated material dislodged from his plane and he felt a thick wind grip his wings. Although the heat shielding retracted from his canopy, his field of vision hardly changed. Though the moon was known for having the most mild and sunny weather in the British System, today the skies were filled with a dense layer of thundering clouds.

"All units, maintain decent and form up at checkpoint bravo. Once we break through the fog the archers should be-" His commander's voice was cut off by one of their squadmates' screams followed by a distant percusion and the muffled static of a melting radio.

"Disperse, disperse!" The commander yelled. Just then a searing beam of heat flew over the rookie's left wing. He pushed the joystick and throttle forward, yearning to break through the vision obscuring wall of cloud.

_The archers should have been kilometers away from our checkpoint, what the hell is going on?_ A flash of lightning ignited above him and he plunged his nose down in terror. The clouds below him began to glow. He veered to the right just as another beam tore past him. In that same moment, the clouds broke to reveal the surface of Cornwall.

The arid moorlands were shadowed and gray under the storm, but the blasts of lightning and archer fire blended together to illuminate the hellish landscape. A downpour of rain and shower of bullets tore through the sprawling mounds of treeless dirt below him. With the remaining fighters now soaring out of the clouds, the immense tank-like archers drew up firing lines and prepared to fire a barrage into the sky.

Each double barrel of the archers began to boil with a yellow energy, seconds later a massive volley of iridescent energy enveloped the sky. The fighters struggled to weave between the gigantic columns of plasma and another four planes were caught in the hailstorm of heat. The rookie had managed to survive, though not because he was a talented pilot. The largest factor that now separated the living from the dead wasn't skill, but luck.

The volley had left most of the archers cooling and recharging, creating a narrow window for the fighters to counterattack. He armed the Air-to-Ground missiles and the FCS automatically targeted the four nearest archers and within a few seconds the reticles on his HUD switched from green to red. He squeezed the lower button on his joystick and a flurry of steel flew from the two weapon bays under the fuselage.

Three hit their mark with a blast of dirt and fire as he sailed overhead. He looked back and saw that the line of archers was only moderately broken and scattered. Furthermore, the once twelve plane squadron now had only four aircraft remaining. This was especially unfortunate as the heart of the battle drew nearer across the horizon. Laying before them was another ominous cloud that hung low in the sky. Though instead of thundering with lightning, this cloud bled the flickering light of endless weapons fire. It was a swarming, pulsating billow of steel, and it was where they were headed.

His squadron was assigned the role of acting as reinforcements for the eastern flank. Though his commander was the only one left from his original team, the two other surviving fighters fell into formation with them reforming a standard four plane flight. As they flew onward, occasionally dodging the fire of a stray archer, the cloud grew closer and the blurred chaos before them unravelled into a flurry of vicious dogfights. Hundreds of fighters were diving and climbing while machine gun fire spat from their planes and the vapor trails of missiles interlaced to form a messy web in the sky. No side had the upper hand.

"Keep the formation tight. It's about to get messy but if we cover each other we'll pull through." The commander reassured his subordinates, though they all knew the hell they were flying into.

"Rookie, you'll be my wingman."

"Yes sir." The rookie answered with feigned composure.

"Something wrong rookie? You're-" Their HUD's switched to red and their computers began to scream the shrill warning '_Missile! Missile! Missile!'_ into their ears.

"12 o' clock high!" A Cornish fighter had peeled off from a climb and was now diving into its prey from above. Two Short-Range Aerial Suppression missiles were spiraling towards them with only seconds until contact. The commander and the rookie banked left while the other two from their squadron veered right. The missiles curved downward and accelerated, hot on their tails.

"Pop flares, rookie!" It was still early in the battle, they had hardly even gotten into the thick of it and they were already depleting their precious supply of flares. They had no choice. Those missiles were designed to produce a larger explosion so that the target had less time and space to avoid their pursuit. A flurry of glowing orbs of heat emptied from their planes and the missiles dipped below in response. The detonation violently jostled the fighters and while they were regaining control, the Cornish plane began to trail them like a bloodthirsty predator.

No matter what maneuver they tried to make to break away, the Cornish fighter was glued to them with laser focus while the enemy pilot was establishing another lock. Then in an instant the Cornish fighter was reduced to a fiery pulp that scattered into the earth below. Off in the distance of the battle, the faint image of towering mechanical humanoid was soaring towards their location atop an enormous shuttle-like craft.

"Commander, I think that's Sir Ulfius!" The rookie cried out in joy and relief but was confused to be met without response. He turned back to see his commander flying before his left wing, just as he thought he had been, though at that moment he understood why a knight was flying towards their location.

_Of course_, he thought to himself. _Why would a knight be intercepting a single fighter away from the battle? _Off in the horizon, behind the outline of his commander's plane was another looming humanoid silhouette leading a detachment of enemy fighters. Riding a similar craft as the other mechanical giant, it was rapidly closing in on the very flank that his squadron had meant to reinforce. Once, the only thing glowing in the darkness on the giant figure were its striking bright green eyes. Now a much brighter, more piercing green light began to radiate from its shoulder.

"You sure are quiet, rookie. I think I have an idea for your callsign." His commander said calmly.

"Commander, break right! Break right! Enemy 8 o' clock!" The rookie tried in vain to shout over his commander as he peeled off and dove, but his commander maintained his flight path.

"How about Mute?"

The sizzling light erupted from its shoulder and cut through the rainy sky in an instant, slicing clean through his commander's melting plane. The rookie watched the warped fragments of the plane explode. He checked his headset. Muted.

The Cornish knight was now rocketing in his direction with astounding speed. He knew he couldn't flee, the output from the Horses that Armor used to fly upon far outmatched any fighter. He only knew from his limited training that in the event of fighting a knight, one's only hope of dealing damage was to target the joints where the plating was absent.

Sir Ulfius was still too far off so he turned about to face enemy knight that was hurtling towards him. He then switched his FCS to target the Armor's weak points and armed his Hyper-Velocity Air-to-Air missiles. It felt like establishing a lock was happening in slow-motion compared to the speed of the knight's advance. The green light flickered to red on the Armor's right arm joint and he squeezed the trigger twice.

The two missiles sped from his plane directly on course. Moments before impact, the knight deployed the rest of his Armor's shield and placed it between the missiles and the arm. The rookie watched as his hope burst into two puffs of flame upon the shield. The Cornish knight drew his sword from his scabbard and it began to glow with iridescent heat. It was too close now. With a downward stroke his plane was cleaved in two.

_Like swatting a fly_, Mute thought.

Ending Results: Heavy casualties on both sides. No conclusive victor.


End file.
